With the introduction of virtualization technology, a computing service provider can now provide computing resources or services to customers dynamically or in a scalable manner. As the computing resource demands of the customer increase, the computing service provider can allocate additional computing resources. Such resources can be provided to the customer as part of a virtual network connectable to the customer's own physical network. These computing resources can be provided to a customer transparently, without the customer's knowledge of where on an associated physical network such a resource exists. However, these computing resources may be represented to the customer as virtual components, such that the customer has the illusion of having sole access to the computing resources.
Generally, the customer is provided with a virtual machine instance that provides computing resources. Typically, the virtual machine instance functions as a virtual computing server that operates on a physical computing node. Typically, there are multiple virtual machine instances allocated on each physical computing node. The physical computing nodes can be grouped into computing networks in a data center. The data center can include hundreds, thousands, or tens of thousands of computing nodes. The computing service provider can operate multiple data centers at multiple geographical locations.